• Win a Free Custom Engraved Brass Coin!!!
    As a way to introduce our brass coins to the community, we will raffle off a free coin during the month of August. Follow link ABOVE for instructions for entering.

Barquentine

B

Bob Walters

Joined
Oct 10, 2023
Messages
12
Points
28

I just finished reading Twilight for the Gods by Ernest Gann. A story of a old ship ( barquentine) and the myriad of troubles it encountered.
I Googled barquentine and it looked like a interesting model to build. But I haven't found a kit that fulfils the definition of barquentine -square rigged foremast and fore and aft rigged main and mizzen. Has anyone run across a kit?

THANKS

Bob Walters
Portland, OR
 
I spent a couple of seasons in the late 70s on a barkentine that still operates out of Philadelphia.
She was Gazela Primeiro then but they just call her Gazela now.
gazela78-79a.jpg
 
Fram was very ugly - Endurance a lot better - This is a steel barquetine similar to the one shown in Twilight of the Gods. Plan drawn by myself. I don't know of any kits as I only scratchbuild. Kits too big, expensive and difficult for me. Also pictured, my model of Bellmore - steel barquentine -

River Hunter Coloured with lettering (Large) - Copy.jpgBellmore (Large).JPG
 
Maybe the Mara Stella Stefano kit and bash it to look like a barquentine??
Allan
 
There were also 4-masted partly square-rigged barques like the Archibald Russel and the grain ships. There's a good little book by Edward Bowness with plans of the Russel, around $12-15 on Abe books.

1740999342310.png
 
According to Howard Chapelle, the Barkentine rig was favored by US West Coast ship owners trading back and forth to the South Pacific Islands. A square rigged foremast was necessary to capture prevailing trade winds while the rig avoided the cost of square rigging additional masts. His book, History of American Sailing Ships provides drawings that should also be available from the Smithsonian.

There were also Barkentines built during the mid-Nineteenth Century on the Great Lakes. These were centerboard vessels sometimes with more than one. Prevailing winds in the Midwest are North West so the schooner was the favored rig for navigating these often narrow waters, but again the square rigged foremast was useful in some conditions. The vessels designed by William Bates were particularly fast and handsome. Contact the Wisconsin Maritime Museum, Manitowoc, Wisconsin for information and drawings.

This is a good opportunity to build a unique model. Bashing a kit will result in a Jackalope. Save your money to buy tools, and build the model from scratch. Not nearly as intimidating as it may seem!

Roger
 
The barquentine in Twilight was a steel vessel, and adapting a wooden kit would not look right.
This is Bellmore - another steel barquentin.


Bellmore sail plan.JPG
 
Roger Pellett said:
According to Howard Chapelle, the Barkentine rig was favored by US West Coast ship owners trading back and forth to the South Pacific Islands. A square rigged foremast was necessary to capture prevailing trade winds while the rig avoided the cost of square rigging additional masts. His book, History of American Sailing Ships provides drawings that should also be available from the Smithsonian.

There were also Barkentines built during the mid-Nineteenth Century on the Great Lakes. These were centerboard vessels sometimes with more than one. Prevailing winds in the Midwest are North West so the schooner was the favored rig for navigating these often narrow waters, but again the square rigged foremast was useful in some conditions. The vessels designed by William Bates were particularly fast and handsome. Contact the Wisconsin Maritime Museum, Manitowoc, Wisconsin for information and drawings.

This is a good opportunity to build a unique model. Bashing a kit will result in a Jackalope. Save your money to buy tools, and build the model from scratch. Not nearly as intimidating as it may seem!

Roger
Click to expand...
From scratch. I have a book Model Ships from Scratch by Scott Robertson. I bought it and several others several years ago from the Naval Institute Press but never really read it. This might be a challenge! Thanks for the information.
Bob Walters
 
Not much of a challenge really. If you have sufficient skill to assemble a kit, you have enough to scratchbuild. The main thing that stops people scratchbuilding is the firm belief that they could not do it. The book you mention seems to be about warship models. Merchant ships are far easier, having very little decoration and no guns.
This is a wooden brigantine, but you are looking for a steel one.


Brigantine (Large).JPG
 
Last edited:
Roger Pellett said:
According to Howard Chapelle, the Barkentine rig was favored by US West Coast ship owners trading back and forth to the South Pacific Islands. A square rigged foremast was necessary to capture prevailing trade winds while the rig avoided the cost of square rigging additional masts. His book, History of American Sailing Ships provides drawings that should also be available from the Smithsonian.
Click to expand...
I am working on a ship-in-a-bottle model of the barquentine W.H. Dimond based on drawings in that book by Chapelle. I recently found the photo from the San Francisco Public Library so I have to repaint the topsides black. The simplified sketch is mine at model scale. Fair winds!

dimond 1.jpgdimond 2.jpgdimond 3.jpgdimond 4.jpg
 
It looks like a nice model!

Living within five miles of Lake Superior, I am interested in Great Lakes Shipping. In the second half of the Nineteenth Century lumber was the largest trade on the Great Lakes. It was hauled in thousands of wooden schooners and “Steam barges” built locally. When the “inexhaustible” forests of white pine played out, many of the shipbuilders who had built these vessels migrated to the West Coast to build ships like your barkentine.

Roger
 
Last edited:
Photo I took in Oslo of a barkentine (a charter vessel perhaps?). Taken about 2013. There was a fairly famous steel barkentine named ‘Mozart’ and IMG_0213.jpegsaid to sail “like a cow”.
 
Roger Pellett said:
It looks like a nice model!

Living within five miles of Lake Superior, I am interested in Great Lakes Shipping. In the second half of the Nineteenth Century lumber was the largest trade on the Great Lakes. It was hauled in thousands of wooden schooners and “Steam barges” built locally. When the “inexhaustible” forests of white pine played out, many of the shipbuilders who had built these vessels migrated to the West Coast to build ships like your barkentine.

Roger
Click to expand...
AJFisher.com offers kits (solid hull tho) for two Great Lakes schooners — one two masted, the other three masted if you’re interested.
 
As I said, it was a purely fictional ship, so I don't see what it matters whichever you choose.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top